(highlight:: White supremacy sits on a foundation of patriarchy - Example: The Wilmington Massacre
Summary:
In Glenda Gilmore's book Gender and Jim Crow, she reveals the connection between white supremacy and patriarchy by recounting the shocking story of the 1898 coup in Wilmington, North Carolina.
White Democrats, unhappy with the progressive government elected in the city, staged a violent takeover, killing African Americans and driving out black leaders. This successful coup marked the end of reconstruction and ushered in a long period of one-party white supremacist rule.
Gilmore explains that white Democrats justified their actions by spreading racist lies rooted in patriarchy, portraying black men as a threat to white women.
This propaganda perpetuated the suppression of black people's rights and led to a new wave of lynchings.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
One of Glenda Gilmore's books is called Gender and Jim Crow, Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina 1896-1920. Throughout the book she shows how white supremacy sits on a foundation of patriarchy. Take the shocking story of Wilmington, North Carolina 1898. What was called a fusion government, progressive and pro-reconstruction, had just been elected in Wilmington, the largest city in the state at the time. The government was made up of white and black Republicans and members of the populist party. Men from the party that lost the election, white Democrats, decided they weren't having it.
Speaker 3
Two days after the election, white men's town leaders staged a coup and take over the government, take over the town government, kill probably 150 African Americans in the streets, And run most black prominent leaders out of town, many leave never to come back. So it's a bloody massacre. They had ordered a Gatling gun, a repeating gun, which is like a Gatling gun, mounted it on the back of the truck and shot people.
Speaker 1
It's the only successful coup in US history. It put a bloody end to reconstruction in North Carolina and ushered in one party white supremacist rule for several generations to come. It sounds like a story about racism, plain and simple, but Gilmore says white Democrats justified what they did with a propaganda campaign, a familiar racist lie drenched in patriarchy.
Speaker 3
The idea that men are not being manly by protecting their families or that giving even an inch is going to cause an eruption of black men pursuing white women, it's the oldest trick in The book. And we see it really across the world in many places with many races, people in power who demonize people of other races often do it by talking about them being a threat to your daughters, Being rapists, being violent.
Speaker 1
So a generation after the end of slavery and reconstruction, black men's citizenship rights are almost completely shut down in the south. It's supremacy reigns across the country, excluding black people from political and economic opportunity and threatening black lives with a new wave of lynchings.)
- Time 0:14:32
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(highlight:: Gertrude Perkins and Rosa Parks: How Black Women's Protest Against Sexual Violence Sparked the Civil Rights Movement
Summary:
Danielle McGuire's book, 'The Dark End of the Street', highlights the stories of Black women whose sexual assaults fueled civil rights activism in the 1950s and 60s.
The Perkins case, which mobilized the Black community and emphasized the protection of Black women's rights, laid the groundwork for the Montgomery bus boycott. Women played a crucial role in leading the boycott, filling the pews, raising funds, and running the carpool system.
The boycott can be seen as a women's movement for bodily integrity and dignity.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Danielle McGuire tells Gertrude Perkins' story in her book, published in 2010, The Dark End of the Street, Black Women, Rape and Resistance, along with the stories of other Black women Whose sexual assaults helped to spark civil rights activism across the South and beyond in the 1950s and 60s. McGuire says it took her a while, but she came to understand why Joe Asbell put so much importance on the case.
Speaker 4
The Perkins case helped to mobilize the Black community. It was divided in many ways by class issues. And it brought everyone together. And it brought everyone together around the protection of Black women's bodily integrity. And there were other cases that continued to pile up in Montgomery during those years that were particularly about Black women's right to their own bodies and the right to move freely Through the world. And those cases centered on police violence that was also sexualized and it centered on violence on the buses. Once I put all those pieces together, Joe Asbell's comments made perfect sense.
Speaker 1
McGuire says the organizing that happened around the Perkins case laid the groundwork for the moment six years later when Rosa Parks and other Black women in Montgomery had had enough. They were tired not just of being forced to the back of the bus as the story is usually told, but of being physically and sometimes sexually assaulted by white men on buses, often drivers And police officers who leered at them, flashed them, sometimes beat them if they showed even a hint of resistance to the humiliations of Jim Crow.
Speaker 4
Most of these women were working class. They worked as domestic in white homes and they needed transportation across town every single day. And so they had no choice but to get on those buses. For most of those Black women, the buses were really the bane of their existence.
Speaker 1
McGuire says when the bus boycott broke out in December 1955, Black men in the community got behind it and in front of it. The young Martin Luther King Jr. Was recruited as the main spokesman along with other male pastors and local leaders who became the public face of the movement.
Speaker 4
But behind the scenes in the everyday what Ella Baker would call the spade work of the movement, it's women. Women led the boycott. They were the ones who walked. They filled the pews at every mass meeting. They raised all of the local money to sustain the movement. They ran the carpool system. Without women there would be no Montgomery bus boycott. And without the movement being about women's issues, there would be no boycotts. So I like to think of the bus boycott really as a women's movement for bodily integrity and a women's movement for dignity.)
- Time 0:30:25
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(highlight:: What Intersectionality Actually Means
Summary:
Kimberly Crenshaw coined the term 'intersectionality' to describe how black women experience double oppression due to both racism and sexism.
She explains that the effects of these injustices are compounded, creating a layered experience. Check out her TED talk or read her work to learn more!
Transcript:
Speaker 1
And that takes us back to Kimberly Crenshaw and what she was trying to describe when she first used the word intersectionality.
Speaker 2
Her insight was that black women, being marginalized by both racism and sexism, are not just doubly oppressed, affected by sexism in one moment and racism in another. The effects are compounded, layered on top of each other. Injustice squared is how she puts it.
Speaker 1
I would really encourage people to read some Kimberly Crenshaw or at least watch her TED talk.)
- Time 0:36:16
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(highlight:: Standpoint theory: marginalized people have the most accurate perspective of how the world works
Summary:
Standpoint theory, coined by Sandra Harding, argues that those at the bottom of social hierarchies have a more accurate understanding of oppressive systems than privileged individuals.
This theory highlights the knowledge and shared experiences of marginalized groups, challenging the traditional view of wisdom belonging to privileged elites.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Well the big takeaway was something called standpoint theory. It was coined by the philosopher Sandra Harding. And the theory basically says that people on the receiving end of oppressive systems, people at the bottom of social hierarchies, will see things more accurately than the people at The top, the ones benefiting from the system. Black women for example, will share a general body of knowledge about how society is, about how it works because of their common experiences. And according to Sandra Harding, that shared understanding won't just be distinctive. It'll actually be better knowledge, more true, than the collective picture of the world that privileged people like me will soak up from our surroundings.
Speaker 2
That makes intuitive sense to me. And you know, actually it's just a philosophical way of restating everything we've been talking about in terms of intersectionality. But it is true. That is not how Western societies have usually described who the knowledgeable people are.
Speaker 1
Exactly. And at that point, the traditional image of the wisest, most knowledgeable person is the elite sage, you know, the guy, and it's a guy sitting alone in his room lined with books. Maybe he's got the pipe going. And he's got time to contemplate. He is unstressed. He's almost by definition a privileged person who isn't struggling to survive.
Speaker 2
But standpoint theory comes along and says no, the people you should rely on to see the truth about society are going to be marginalized people.)
- Time 0:39:25
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